Reviewing a series of productions for the New York Times on December 15, 1988, under the title, “In London: Taking Williams Seriously,” Frank Rich makes an insightful comment about America's most influential playwright five years after his freakish, accidental death in 1983:

Rich's observation could be extended to the better part of Europe, of course, where the most serious rediscoveries of Williams's work seem centered. Much of the neglect of Williams in the United States has indeed been fueled by preoccupations with the playwright's biography, his tempestuous life and sensational, even clownish public and media appearances, all of which often overshadowed his art. His Memoirs in particular, published in 1975 and admittedly written for the cash advance, was exceptionally candid about his sexuality and love life and so did little to redeem his falling reputation. On the other side of the Atlantic, Williams's early plays were quickly performed by allies and in newly liberated European countries, including the European premiere of The Glass Menagerie in Stockholm in 1946 (although Sweden was nominally neutral during World War II) then in London in 1948; A Streetcar Named Desire opened in most major European capitals, including Rome, London and Paris, by 1949.1 These were subsequently followed by “the critically controversial yet financially successful Paris production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof a decade later” (Gindt, 2013, 19). In a Britain still struggling to emerge from its Victorian legacy, Williams's more sexually charged work often appeared in heavily censored productions, and early publications tended to follow those sanitized versions of his work.